“Ha-ha!  Ho-ho-ho!” laughed the fakir.  “The heat grows great, and the tongues grow dry, and none bring water!  Ho-ho!  But I told them that I needed these for a deadlier death than any they devised!  Ho-ho-ho-ho!  Look at the little crows, how they wait in the branches!  Ha-ha-ha-ha!  See how the kites come!  Where are the vultures?  Wait!  What speck sails in the sky there?  Even the vultures come!  Ho-ho-ho-ho!”

“I hear a horse, sir!” said one of the men who watched.

“I heard it more than a minute ago,” said Brown.

The fakir stopped his mockery, and even he listened.

“Ask him,” said Brown, “where are the men who set fire to the guardroom?”

“He says they are in the village, waiting till he sends for them!” said the Beluchi.

“Keep an eye lifting, you men,” ordered Brown.  “This’ll be a messenger from Bholat, ten to one.  Mind they don’t ambush him!  Watch every way at once, and shoot at anything that moves!”

“Clippety-clippety-clippety-cloppety—­”

The sound of a galloping horse grew nearer; a horse hard-ridden, that was none the less sure-footed still, and going strong in spite of sun and heat.  Suddenly a foam-flecked black mare swung round a bend between two banks, and the sun shone on a polished saber-hilt.  A turbaned Rajput rose in his stirrups, gazed left and right and then in front of him—­from the burned-out guardhouse to the baobab—­drew rein to a walk and waved his hand.

“By all that’s good and great and wonderful,” said Brown aloud, “if here’s not Juggut Khan again!”

X.

It is not easy to give any kind of real impression of India twenty-four hours after the outbreak of the mutiny.  Movement was the keynote of the picture—­stealthy, not-yet-quite-confident pack-movement on the one hand, concentrated here and there in blood-red eddies, and, on the other hand, swift, desperate marches in the open.

The moment that the seriousness of the outbreak had been understood, and the orders had gone out by galloper to “Get a move on!” each commanding officer strained every nerve at once to strike where a blow would have the most effect.  There was no thought of anything but action, and offensive, not defensive action.  Until some one at the head of things proved still to be alive, and had had time to form a plan, each divisional commander acted as he saw fit.  That was all that any one was asked to do at first:  to act, to strike, to plunge in headlong where the mutiny was thickest and most dangerous, to do anything, in fact; except sit still.

Even with the evidence of mutiny and treachery on every side, with red flames lighting the horizon and the stench of burning villages on every hand, the strange Anglo-Saxon quality persisted that has done more even that the fighting-quality to teach the English tongue to half the world.  The native servants who had not yet run away retained their places still, unquestioned.  When an Englishman has once made up his mind to trust another man, he trusts him to the hilt, whatever shade of brown or red or white his hide may be.